Hasta La Creative!

PepsiCo’s first quarter earnings report Thursday morning showed that the snack and beverage giant’s profits had fallen 5% from the period a year earlier, but also revealed a big jump in marketing and ad spending.

The company’s global marketing and ad expenses shot up 11% in the first quarter, compared with the first quarter of 2012, according to PepsiCo’s report. That’s counter to a number of big multinationals that are being more conservative with their ad spend these days.

But PepsiCo has been continuing to ramp up investments in marketing for core brands such as Pepsi, Gatorade, Lay’s and Quaker. In 2012 it pledged to spend an additional $500 million to $600 million globally on its core brands, a promise the company has said it kept. The global jump in the first quarter follows a 30% spike in its U.S. measured media spending last year, to a total of $834 million, according to Kantar Media.

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